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Working Paper
The Causal Effects of Expected Depreciations
We estimate the causal effects of a shift in the expected future exchange rate of a local currency against the US dollar on a representative sample of firms in an open economy. We survey a nationally representative sample of firms and provide the one-year-ahead nominal exchange rate forecast published by the local central bank to a random sub-sample of firm managers. The treatment is effective in shifting exchange rate and inflation expectations and perceptions. These effects are persistent and larger for non-exporting firms. Linking survey responses with administrative census data, we find ...
Working Paper
Learning and Misperception: Implications for Price-Level Targeting
Monetary policy strategies that target the price level have been advocated as a more effective way to provide economic stimulus in a deep recession when conventional monetary policy is limited by the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates. Yet, the effectiveness of these strategies depends on a central bank's ability to steer agents' expectations about the future path of the policy rate. We develop a flexible method of learning about the central bank's policy rule from observed interest rates that takes into account the limited informational content at the zero lower bound. When agents ...
Working Paper
How Robust Are Makeup Strategies to Key Alternative Assumptions?
We analyze the robustness of makeup strategies—policies that aim to offset, at least in part, past misses of inflation from its objective—to alternative modeling assumptions, with an emphasis on the role of inflation expectations. We survey empirical evidence on the behavior of shorter-run and long-run inflation expectations. Using simulations from the FRB/US macroeconomic model, we find that makeup strategies can moderately offset the real effects of adverse economic shocks, even when much of the public is uninformed about the monetary strategy. We also discuss the robustness of makeup ...
Working Paper
What Can Measured Beliefs Tell Us About Monetary Non-Neutrality?
This paper studies how measured beliefs can be used to identify monetary non-neutrality. In a general equilibrium model with both nominal rigidities and endogenous information acquisition, we analytically characterize firms’ optimal dynamic information policies and how their beliefs affect monetary non-neutrality. We then show that data on the cross-sectional distributions of uncertainty and pricing durations are both necessary and sufficient to identify monetary non-neutrality. Finally, implementing our approach in New Zealand survey data, we find that informational frictions approximately ...
Working Paper
The Transmission of International Monetary Policy Shocks on Firms' Expectations
Motivated by the dominant role of the US dollar, we explore how monetary policy (MP) shocks in the US can affect a small open economy through the expectation channel. We combine data from a panel survey of firms' expectations in Uruguay with granular information about firms' debt position and total imports on a monthly basis. We show that a contractionary MP shock in the US reduces firms' inflation and cost expectations in Uruguay. This result contrasts with the inflationary effect of this shock on the Uruguayan economy, suggesting uncertainty about the policy regime. We discuss the issues ...
Working Paper
Indirect Consumer Inflation Expectations: Theory and Evidence
Based on indirect utility theory, we introduce a novel methodology of measuring inflation expectations indirectly. This methodology starts at the individual level, asking consumers about the change in income required to buy the same amounts of goods and services one year ahead. Analytically, our methodology possesses smaller ex-post aggregate inflation forecast errors relative to forecasts based on conventional survey questions. We ask this question in a large-scale, high-frequency survey of consumers in the US and 14 countries, and we show that indirect consumer inflation expectations ...
Working Paper
Low Passthrough from Inflation Expectations to Income Growth Expectations: Why People Dislike Inflation
Using a novel experimental setup, we study the direction of causality between consumers’ inflation expectations and their income growth expectations. In a large, nationally representative survey of US consumers, we find that the rate of passthrough from expected inflation to expected income growth is incomplete, on the order of 20 percent. There is no statistically significant effect going in the other direction. Passthrough varies systematically with demographic and socioeconomic factors, with greater passthrough for higher-income individuals than lower-income individuals, although it is ...
Working Paper
Macroeconomic Expectations and Cognitive Noise
This paper examines forecast biases through cognitive noise, moving beyond the conventional view that frictions emerge solely from using external data. By extending Sims’s (2003) imperfect attention model to include imperfect memory, I propose a framework where cognitive constraints impact both external and internal information use. This innovation reveals horizon-dependent forecast sensitivity: short-term forecasts adjust sluggishly while long-term forecasts may overreact. I explore the macroeconomic impact of this behavior, showing how long-term expectations, heavily influenced by current ...
Working Paper
Inflation Thresholds and Inattention
Inflation expectations are key to economic activity, and in the current economic climate of a heated labor market, they are central to the policy debate. At the same time, a growing literature on inattention suggests that individuals, and therefore individual behavior, may not be sensitive to changes in inflation when it is low. This paper explores evidence of such inattention by constructing three different measures based on the University of Michigan’s Survey of Consumers 1-year ahead inflation expectations. Exploring inflation thresholds of 2, 3, and 4 percent, our findings are ...
Working Paper
Survey Data and Subjective Beliefs in Business Cycle Models
This paper develops a theory of subjective beliefs that departs from rational expectations, and shows that biases in household beliefs have quantitatively large effects on macroeconomic aggregates. The departures are formalized using model-consistent notions of pessimism and optimism and are disciplined by data on household forecasts. The role of subjective beliefs is quantified in a business cycle model with goods and labor market frictions. Consistent with the survey evidence, an increase in pessimism generates upward biases in unemployment and inflation forecasts and lowers economic ...